YouTube Channel Analyzer: Analytics, Outliers & Competitor Analysis

Answer first: this YouTube channel analyzer turns any public channel (yours or a competitor's) into a ready-to-use YouTube analytics report: subscribers, total views, upload cadence, median views, engagement rate, best upload day and hour in your time zone, outlier videos (views vs the channel's own median), title patterns and topics that win, Shorts vs long-form, a multi-channel competitor comparison and plain-English recommendations. No API key, no login. $0.025 per channel report, with no start fee and no extra scraper cost in normal runs.

Quick facts
Best for	YouTube competitor analysis, channel audits, content strategy, finding outlier video ideas, best time to upload on YouTube, creator vetting for sponsorships, monthly client reports
Input	Channel handles (@mkbhd), channel URLs (youtube.com/@name, youtube.com/channel/UC..., /c/, /user/) or any video URL from the channel
Output	One row per channel: channel stats, uploadsPerWeek, medianViews, medianEngagementRatePct, viewsPerSubscriberPct, bestUploadDays, bestTimeBlocks, outlierVideos, titlePatterns, topTopics, durationPerformance, trend, recommendations, summary + a Markdown REPORT with a comparison table
Our price	$0.025 per completed channel report. Channels that can't be analyzed are never charged
Data cost	$0 in normal runs: public YouTube pages and feeds, no proxy, no third-party scraper
Needs	Nothing. No YouTube Data API key, no OAuth, no cookies

What you get per channel

• Channel stats: name, handle, channel ID, subscribers, total views, total videos, join date, country, description, external links.
• Recent video performance: the latest 30 long-form videos and 15 Shorts by default (up to 150 + 60), each with views, likes, comments, engagement rate, views per day, duration and an outlier score.
• Upload cadence: uploads per week (long-form and Shorts separately), median days between uploads, days since the last upload, uploads in the last 30 / 90 days.
• Best upload day and hour: weekdays and 3-hour windows ranked by how much they beat the channel's typical video, in the time zone you choose. Small samples are shrunk toward 1.0 and flagged lowSample, so one lucky upload can't win on its own.
• Outlier videos: every video with views at least 2x the channel median (you can change the threshold), plus the weakest uploads. Outliers are where most video ideas come from.
• Title patterns: numbers, questions, "how to", lists, "vs", brackets, colons, ALL-CAPS words, emoji, first person, years, emotional words, and title length. Each one shows its lift: median views with the pattern vs without it.
• Topics: recurring title keywords and two-word phrases ranked by performance (topTopics), the topics the channel covers most (mostCoveredTopics) and the ones that lag (weakTopics).
• Video length: which duration bucket performs best (under 5, 5-10, 10-20, 20-40 and 40+ minutes).
• Trend: recent median views vs older uploads, so you can see whether the channel is growing or slowing.
• Recommendations: what to post, when, how to title it and what to drop, written from the numbers above.
• Competitor comparison: add 2+ channels and the REPORT record gets a side-by-side table: subscribers, median views, uploads per week, engagement, views per subscriber, outliers, best day and window.

How it works

1. Reads the channel page, its About panel and the Videos and Shorts tabs, the same public data anyone sees in a browser.
2. For each video it reads the exact view count, likes, comment count and publish date. Exact publish times come from YouTube's public RSS feeds, which cover the latest 15 long-form videos and 15 Shorts. Older videos keep their date, so they count for the best day but not the best hour, and the row's notes say so.
3. Outlier score = video views ÷ the channel's median views (1.0 = a typical video, 3.0 = three times typical). It's computed separately for long-form and Shorts, and videos under 3 days old are left out of the scoring because they haven't collected their views yet.
4. Days, time windows, title patterns, topics and lengths are ranked on the same score, so a 5k-subscriber channel and a 20M one compare fairly.
5. If YouTube ever blocks a request, the actor can fall back to streamers/youtube-channel-scraper on your account (about $0.0013 per video, capped by maxScraperSpendUsd, default $0.25). This is rare, and the row's dataSource tells you when it happened.

Input examples

Your channel against two competitors, times in New York:

{ "channels": ["@yourchannel", "@competitor1", "https://www.youtube.com/@competitor2"], "timezone": "America/New_York" }

Deep dive on one channel (150 videos, Shorts off, outliers at 3x):

{ "channels": ["youtube.com/channel/UCsBjURrPoezykLs9EqgamOA"], "videosPerChannel": 150, "shortsPerChannel": 0, "outlierThreshold": 3 }

Channel from a video link:

{ "channels": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"] }

Field	Default	What it does
channels	required	Handles, channel URLs or video URLs
videosPerChannel	30	Latest long-form videos to analyze (5-150)
shortsPerChannel	15	Latest Shorts to analyze (0-60, 0 = skip)
timezone	UTC	Zone for the best day and hour (Asia/Riyadh, UTC+3, EST, London)
includeEngagement	true	Likes, comments and engagement rate
outlierThreshold	2	Outlier = views at least this many times the median
minVideoAgeDays	3	Younger videos are listed but not scored
useFallbackScraper / maxScraperSpendUsd	true / $0.25	Fallback only when YouTube blocks a request

Sample output (real run, 20 Oct 2026, times in UTC; trimmed)

{
  "channelName": "Marques Brownlee", "channelHandle": "@mkbhd", "subscribers": 21400000, "totalViews": 5800350438, "totalVideos": 1859,
  "videosAnalyzed": 30, "shortsAnalyzed": 15, "uploadsPerWeek": 1.34, "shortsPerWeek": 0.54, "daysSinceLastUpload": 3.22,
  "medianViews": 5632724, "medianShortsViews": 4757454, "medianEngagementRatePct": 2.03, "viewsPerSubscriberPct": 26.32,
  "bestUploadDay": "Sat", "bestUploadTimeBlock": "21-24", "outlierCount": 5,
  "topOutlier": {"title": "iPhone 18 Pro/Duo Impressions: Mogged", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od6M0AXpcxQ", "publishedAt": "2026-09-10T07:29:55.000Z", "views": 28127612, "likes": 366514, "outlierScore": 4.99, "durationSec": 1034},
  "longForm": {
    "trend": {"recentMedianViews": 10660542, "olderMedianViews": 4467028, "changePct": 139},
    "bestUploadDays": [{"day": "Sat", "videos": 3, "medianIndex": 1.96, "medianViews": 11015257}, {"day": "Thu", "videos": 5, "medianIndex": 1.51, "medianViews": 8520212}, ...],
    "bestTimeBlocks": [{"timeBlock": "21-24", "videos": 5, "medianIndex": 1.83}, ...],
    "titlePatterns": [{"pattern": "ALL-CAPS word", "videosWith": 3, "medianIndexWith": 1.51, "medianIndexWithout": 0.97, "lift": 1.56}, ...],
    "topTopics": [{"topic": "iphone", "videos": 3, "medianIndex": 2.27, "medianViews": 12764351}, ...],
    "durationPerformance": [...], "outlierVideos": [...], "underperformers": [...], "videos": [... 30 videos with views, likes, comments, outlierScore ...]
  },
  "shorts": { ... same structure for the 15 latest Shorts ... },
  "recommendations": [
    "Upload long-form on Sat / Thu: those days beat the channel median by 1.96x / 1.51x (3 / 5 videos).",
    "Best long-form upload window: 21-24 (UTC), 1.83x median over 5 videos; you usually publish around 21:00.",
    "5 long-form outliers (>= 2x median). Biggest: \"iPhone 18 Pro/Duo Impressions: Mogged\" at 4.99x. Make follow-ups / part 2s on that idea and reuse its title and thumbnail angle.",
    "Long-form titles with ALL-CAPS word get 1.56x the views of titles without (3 videos). Use it more.",
    "Double down on long-form topics that over-perform: \"iphone\" (2.27x, 3 videos).",
    ...
  ],
  "summary": "Marques Brownlee (21,400,000 subscribers): 30 videos, median 5,632,724 views, 1.34/week; 15 Shorts, median 4,757,454 views. Best day Sat, best window 21-24 UTC. 5 outlier(s) >= 2x median, engagement 2.03%."
}

Each run also saves REPORT (Markdown with the competitor comparison table) and SUMMARY (JSON) in the key-value store.

Pricing

What	Price
Channel report	$0.025 per channel that's analyzed
Channel not found / invalid / under 3 videos	$0
Scraper or proxy cost	$0 in normal runs (fallback only: ~$0.0013 per video, capped)

Example: you plus 4 competitors = $0.125. Weekly tracking of 10 channels = $1 a month.

Your Apify Max cost per run is checked before anything is fetched. If it covers fewer reports than the channels you list, the extra channels are skipped and come back as NOT_ANALYZED with the reason and charged: false.

How it compares (Apify Store, checked 20 Oct 2026, FREE-plan prices)

Actor	Price per channel	Notes
cygnix_labs/youtube-channel-analyzer (this)	$0.025 all-in	Stats, cadence, best day/hour, outliers, title patterns, topics, Shorts vs long-form, comparison, recommendations
seemuapps/youtube-channel-growth-analyzer	$0.02	Growth metrics
salomon.labs/youtube-channel-analyzer	$0.03	Audience language and sponsorship focus
centorprat/youtube-influencer-audit	$0.04 (+$0.03 deep)	Fake-subscriber and engagement audit
feeng/youtube-channel-competitor-intelligence	$0.02 + $0.002 per video (~$0.08 at 30 videos)	Content gap
apricot_blackberry/youtube-creator-analyzer	$0.05 start + $0.035 per result	Creator performance
seemuapps/youtube-content-gap-finder	$0.05 per analysis + $0.02 per gap	Topic gaps

Plain scrapers (for example streamers/youtube-channel-scraper, $0.0013 per video) give you raw rows to analyze yourself. This actor gives you the analysis.

For AI agents / MCP

When to call it: the user wants to analyze a YouTube channel, compare YouTube competitors, find outlier or viral video ideas on a channel, learn the best time to upload, audit a creator before a sponsorship, or get YouTube analytics without the YouTube Data API.

Connect the Apify MCP server with only this actor (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code, any MCP client):

https://mcp.apify.com?tools=cygnix_labs/youtube-channel-analyzer

Or search-actors for youtube channel analyzer, youtube analytics or youtube competitor analysis.

Example call-actor input: { "channels": ["@mkbhd", "@unboxtherapy"], "videosPerChannel": 30, "timezone": "America/New_York" }. Read the result: keep rows where status == "ANALYZED". summary is a quotable one-liner, recommendations[] is ready to show, longForm.outlierVideos[] lists the breakout videos and bestUploadDay / bestUploadTimeBlock give the timing. Cost is $0.025 per channel; pass maxTotalChargeUsd to cap it. The actor runs with limited permissions and pay-per-event pricing, so it suits autonomous agents.

Example prompt: "Compare my channel @mychannel with @rival1 and @rival2. Which topics and title styles get them outlier views, and when should I upload?"

FAQ

Do I need a YouTube API key or access to the channel? No. Only public data is used, so it works on any public channel, including competitors.

How is this different from YouTube Studio analytics? Studio shows private metrics (watch time, CTR, retention) for your own channel only. This actor works on any channel from public data, so you can benchmark competitors and find their outliers.

How accurate are the numbers? View, like and subscriber counts are what YouTube shows publicly. Subscribers are rounded by YouTube (e.g. 4.31M), and comment counts of 1,000+ are rounded (e.g. 21K). The notes field lists every limit that applied to a run.

Why do only some videos have an exact upload hour? YouTube's public feeds give exact times for the latest 15 videos and 15 Shorts. Older videos have the date only, so they count for the best day. The latest uploads are the ones that reflect the current schedule anyway.

What counts as engagement rate? (likes + comments) ÷ views × 100 per video. The channel figure is the median across videos.

Channel not found or has very few videos? You get a NOT_ANALYZED row with the reason, and it isn't charged. At least 3 public videos are needed.

Live streams? Videos that are live now or scheduled are skipped. Past streams and premieres listed on the Videos tab are included.

Changelog

• 0.1 (2026-10-20): First release. Channel stats, long-form and Shorts analysis, best upload day and hour, outliers, title patterns, topics, duration, trend, competitor comparison and recommendations. Max cost per run is checked before fetching.

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Questions or a feature request? Open an issue on this actor's Issues tab. We answer within 24 hours.